


Going Out With the Tide

by kaffyr (kaffyrutsky), kaffyrutsky



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-31
Updated: 2010-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-17 18:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaffyrutsky/pseuds/kaffyr, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaffyrutsky/pseuds/kaffyrutsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time can be a dance, time can be a river, time can leave behind so much. And sometimes time catches up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Out With the Tide

**Author's Note:**

> We were told that time appeared to move differently in Pete's World, at least in relation to events in our own. I don't think that it necessarily always moved faster. What if it moved much more slowly?
> 
> As always, I do not own any Whoniverse characters. They are the property of the BBC and their various creators. I earn nothing and intend no infringements. I do love them all, though.  
> 
> 
>   
> 

It was something the Doctor noted in passing, that day in Canary Wharf before the short and brutal war. Time passed differently over in Pete's Universe.

  
The last time the universes had reached out towards each other, he noticed more signs that time danced through them at a different pace.

  
And then that part of his life was over, and he went on, and regenerated, and regenerated, and regenerated, and then he died, and his TARDIS mourned and followed him into death. And the universe that knew him went on without him. No more Time Lords, and no memory of the thing he'd noted all those years before.

  
In the universe that slowly forgot the Doctor, that universe in which even the legends of Gallifrey were lost; in that universe, one fixed point in time wound its weary way around a Moebius strip of unending existence.

  
Jack had had a long time in which to forget a great many things.

  
He'd long since forgotten his youth. He'd forgotten wars and worlds and empires and the black times and spaces between them. He'd forgotten people he hated. He'd forgotten people he loved. He had forgotten people.

  
He forgot, and forgot, and forgot; he forgot to be human and forgot things beyond the imaginings of humanity as he went on to become something unique, and solitary, and never not alone.

  
He had most certainly long since forgotten Torchwood, and the case records he'd read of Pete's Universe, and the notes that time appeared to pass differently there.

  
But when Rose Tyler died - happy and surrounded by children, grand-children and a grieving but loving husband, 70 years after she fell in love with the one-hearted Doctor - the Bad Wolf lost the second of its parents.

  
Across the Void, a fixed point in time lost its final anchor and dispersed, grateful and exhausted. In the timeless moments before it disappeared, it seemed to be surrounded by a swirl and kiss of gold.  


 =30-

 

  



End file.
